Springbok, Namibia

I've gotten lens flare that looks like a series of circles, not pretty. But during the day, if you use a wide open shutter, will you get that more spread out colored light rather than the ugly circles? I realize it will be better when the sun is lower. It's the wide open shutter that I'm really asking about and how that affects the lens flare.

So, two things will affect the way the flare looks. One is your focal length. With wider lenses, you'll get more of that "flare blob" look. With longer lenses, the flare blobs essentially spread across the entire image frame. Two is aperture. Stopping down and using small apertures increases your depth of field, which brings the flare more in focus (making the flare circles more apparent). Shooting wide open, like with f/2.8 or f/4, minimizes your depth of field and makes the flare more blurry, spreading it out and reducing or eliminating the circle look.

This is very interesting. I knew, of course, about flare from shooting into the sun and using trees, etc. to partially block the sun, but I didn't know about how using a wide aperture with a telephoto could spread it out for a golden look overall without the ugly circles. We are taking our grandson to Alaska in June to photograph bear in Katmai (I want to get him excited about photography) and I have been thinking about doing some of the backlit things you have suggested in your videos like turning the bear into silhouettes highlighted by the sun on their fur. But this is another possibility for a golden look toward sunset like you did with your Springbok. Sunset in June is around 11:30 in Alaska but I think maybe there is golden hour type light for quite some time before that, although I am not really sure about light conditions in Alaska.